


fall to earth

by BunniesofDoom



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Not Canon Compliant, Ruby Rose (RWBY) Needs a Hug, Spoilers: Volume 8 (RWBY), Volume 8 (RWBY), ruby is not having a good time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27828241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunniesofDoom/pseuds/BunniesofDoom
Summary: It's a long way down from Atlas.
Relationships: Ruby Rose & Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	fall to earth

**Author's Note:**

> I've still got 5 more days until I can watch episode 4 in full, so I'm just going to keep chucking my ideas out there. This was vaguely inspired by a piece of fan art by afanatic4life on tumblr. I will post the link to the art on my fanfction.net profile (same username). Not entirely sure if the logistics entirely work out here, but tbh I don't care anymore. Set after episode 3 of volume 8, so volume 8 spoilers are present. Enjoy!

When Yang returns from the garage where she was working on the bikes to see her scroll lit up with over two dozen missed calls, she naturally assumes the worst.

It's not an unreasonable assumption, these days. Checking her missed call log she sees 8 missed calls form Blake, 16 missed calls from Weiss. A couple of calls from a number she doesn't recognize.

So not good. She doesn't stop to think, or wonder if her teammates tried to contact Jaune and Ren as well, just immediately dials the number from the last missed call.

Weiss picks up immediately, sounding more frantic than Yang has ever heard her before. "Oh, thank goodness you finally picked up! Blake, I got through to her." There's the sound of voices murmuring in the background, but Weiss doesn't seem to be paying attention to them. "Yang, we've got a bit of a situation here."

"What happened?" Yang asks. She hears the door open behind her and Ren and Jaune enter, back from their patrol. She ignores them.

"Yang, do you know why Weiss and Blake have been blowing up our scrolls the whole time we were gone or—"

"I'm talking to them now," she says, cutting them off. "Weiss, spit it out already."

"We were heading back from the Atlas base when our airship was attacked," Weiss begins. "We were invisible, but I guess the Grimm could still sense us. We managed to fight them all off, but." And here Weiss hesitates, as if not sure what to say.

"Weiss, you're taking too long," Blake interrupts. There's the sound of shuffling, and then Blake's voice is suddenly much clearer. "Yang, we need your help. During the fight, Ruby—she got knocked out of the airship. She fell, Yang."

The line goes silent for a moment as Yang's heart lurches. She thinks she might be sick. "She fell?" Yang croaks out when she can finally speak again, numb with shock.

"Most likely, all the way down to Solitas," Blake says, her tone pained but blunt.

"I mean, she probably survived the fall though, right?" Weiss points out, slightly muffled in the background. "I've seen her survive similar stunts with Crescent Rose, and she still had her weapon and most of her aura left."

"We're hoping—" Blake begins, before Yang cuts her off.

"She's alive," she grits out, unable to even consider the alternative. Ruby had to have survived. Surely Yang would have felt it, a sense of wrongness in the world, if her little sister was dead. There's no way she would have missed it.

"Well, if she is alive, she's stranded, and we need to get to her as soon as possible, before the cold or the Grimm do."

A sudden thought strikes Yang. "Why aren't you guys going after her now? Why call—"

"We can't," Blake cuts her off, sounding dangerously close to tears. "The airship is grounded. We were lucky to be able to land it before it crashed. I know that you guys are busy, but you have the bikes. We need someone to—"

"I'll go," Yang interrupts her, standing up abruptly. "We'll all go, cover more ground that way."

"Weiss will send you the coordinates of where we were attacked, that should at least help you narrow it down."

Yang nods, too busy grabbing her stuff to respond vocally. "We'll head out now."

"Thank you, Yang. Stay safe out there."

"You too," she responds absently, before ending the call.

"Where are we going?" Jaune and Ren ask in unison.

Oh right, she hasn't filled them in yet. Sighing, she braces herself to explain the situation to the boys.

Hang in there, Ruby.

"That was way too close for comfort," Ruby says to herself, leaning on Crescent Rose and breathing heavily. Standing in the middle of the snowy fields of Solitas with the city of Atlas looming overhead, she can appreciate just how far of a drop it truly was. "Let's never do that again."

She scans the horizon, trying to come up with some sort of plan. Penny had been wrong about the tundra being scenic, but at least all those dull supply runs means that Ruby is fairly familiar with the landscape. Her eyes are sharp from years of using a sniper rifle, and she's able to spot a few recognizable landmarks. That should be enough to point her in the direction of Mantle.

After all, Ruby thinks, biting her lip, it's not like she can count on a rescue right now. The girls might not be able to come after her if the airship was damaged in that attack, and it's not like Yang and the others know where she is right now. And she doesn't have any signal on her scroll to call for help. It's up to her to make it out of this one on her own.

Which Ruby is fine with, really. She can handle this. She's fought monsters that other people can only dream of. She's walked across almost the entire continent of Anima. On foot.

So, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that reminds her that she didn't do any of those things on her own, she sheathes Crescent Rose and squares her shoulders. "One foot in front of the other," she tells herself. "Come on."

Even going at the bikes' top speed (and maybe a little faster), the trip takes longer than Yang is comfortable with. She's never been so grateful for Jaune's strategic mind before; he'd come up with the search strategy (fan out as they approach the coordinates Weiss gave them, to cover more ground), a fallback plan (if they don't find anything after several hours of searching, meet up at the largest glacial pass), and made sure that they brought enough supplies with them (backup fuel for the bikes, some water, food, and blankets for Ruby when they found her).

She'd been ready to run out the door with whatever she could carry, but if the small delay ends up helping Ruby in the long run it'll have been worth it.

As they approach the location Weiss indicated in her coordinates, they split up, veering off slightly in different directions. Yang's path ends up taking her a little further from where Weiss had said to look, but there's a tug in her gut that tells her she's headed in the right direction.

Her gut had led her to her sister in Mistral. She trusts it to help her find Ruby again.

Ruby loses track of time walking. She could check the time on her scroll, but it would be disappointing to think that she's been walking for hours if it's really only been a few minutes. She's trying to keep her spirits up here; the last thing she needs is to let herself get distracted by negativity and attract a bunch of Grimm.

Plus, she reminds herself, she powered off her scroll before she started walking. To save battery. It's not like she can use it out here, where there's no signal. This way she'll still be able to use it when she finally has a signal again. To call someone for help, maybe. Sounds like a reasonable enough plan.

She shakes her head, forcing herself to focus. She just needs to keep moving, that's all. She'll stay warmer if she keeps moving.

The chill of the wind cuts through her aura more easily than she'd thought it would, and Ruby wraps her cloak around herself to stay warm. She must have drained her aura earlier, using her semblance on that many people at the base. It can't be helped now. Just another reason she should keep going, and not let herself stop.

Deep down, a part of Ruby wants to be scared. Terrified, actually. But she shoves those thoughts to the back of her mind and covers them with determination. She did not come all this way to let this stop her. She's not going to die because of a little cold weather.

Maybe it's the cold, or the reflections of the dim light off the colorless snow, but Ruby keeps finding herself staring at things that aren't really there. Sometimes she sees nice things, like her mom and dad, and Zwei. Sometimes it's not-so-nice things, like a pack of Grimm, Cinder, or worst of all, Salem. After the first few times they catch her off guard, she learns to just ignore them and press forward.

Even if she can ignore them, though, she's pretty sure that the hallucinations aren't a good sign.

Also not a good sign is the way that walking is becoming increasingly difficult. She finds herself stumbling more often than not, and it's becoming harder to force herself to her feet every time she falls. "Get with the program," she mutters to herself, glaring at her feet. She is not going to die out here. She can make it to Mantle on her own.

Can't she?

When she sees—thinks she sees—her sister on the horizon, she sighs and tells herself to ignore it. It's not the first time she's seen Yang out here, and she refuses to get her hopes up. What would her sister even be doing out here? She's supposed to be helping the people of Mantle, not wandering around out here on the tundra.

Whatever. If Ruby just ignores the not-Yang, she'll go away. Just like everyone else.

She squints in confusion when Yang fails to disappear after a few minutes. If anything, she looks more real and . . . she's coming closer? The hoverbike is new, too.

Some small part of her can't help but feel hopeful as the bike skids to a stop in front of her and her sister jumps off, racing over to her. "Ruby! Thank the gods I finally found you!"

None of the other hallucinations had talked before. "Yang?" she asks in a shaky voice.

"I'm here, Ruby," her sister says with a smile, before enveloping Ruby in one of her infamous bear hugs. Her skin is warm, she's so warm, and Ruby had almost forgotten what warmth felt like.

This is real.

"Yang," she mumbles again, voice breaking. Her sister just hugs her impossibly tighter, and Ruby bursts into tears.

She's going to make it after all.

Ruby can't seem to stop crying. She eventually settles down from her sobs and blubbering apologies enough for Yang to wrap her in a blanket and get her situated on the bike, but Yang can still hear sniffling as they head back to meet up with Jaune and Ren.

"You know," she calls over the rushing wind. "You're going to get dehydrated at this rate."

"Sorry," Ruby mumbles, voice barely audible.

"I think you've apologized enough for a lifetime," Yang points out. "Especially since you've got nothing to be sorry for.

Ruby shakes her head. "But I was such a jerk to you, and you had to come all the way out here and find me."

"If I remember right, we were both being jerks to each other, and it's not like you meant to fall out of an airship and nearly get yourself killed, right?"

"I guess not," Ruby says, laughing a little.

"We're good, little sis," Yang reassures her. "But if you ever scare me like that again, I will kill you myself."

Ruby giggles. "You've got a deal."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please comment and leave kudos if you enjoyed it.


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